Digital broadcasting systems are scheduled to provide a time shifting service to broadcast a particular program on a plurality of channels A to E as offset by stepwise varying periods of delay time as shown in FIG. 7.
When the subscriber performs a viewing starting procedure for the time shifting service before the broadcast starting time of the channel on which the broadcast starts latest, the broadcast starts immediately thereafter on one of the channels, so that a near video on demand function resembling a video on demand function can be realized with respect to channel selection.
The video on demand service provides the same function of pause, rewind or fast forward as is available with a video cassette recorder (VCR), whereas the near video on demand service is not adapted for such a function of the VCR since a plurality of subscribers watch a program on a single channel.
On the other hand, U.S. Pat. No. 5,357,276 proposes a method of realizing functions nearly corresponding to the functions of pause, rewind and fast forward of the VCR by utilizing a time shifting broadcast service. With this method, however, the amounts of time shift of a plurality of channels are registered as fixed values in advance, so that if the time shift data is altered after the registration, an error is likely to occur unless the time shift data is updated. Further since one channel is merely changed over to another by a single keying action in realizing the function generally corresponding to rewind or fast forward, key manipulation must be repeated a number of times to reach the desired channel, hence a cumbersome procedure.